Archive for June 2012

Two weeks ago, Seattle Children’s hosted Dr. Catherine Lord, Director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain, a subsidiary of Weill Cornell Medical College and New York Presbyterian Hospital. During her visit, she toured the Seattle Children’s Autism Center, met with providers and gave several talks.

Well known and respected in the autism community, Dr. Lord “renowned for her work in longitudinal studies of social and communicative development in ASD. She has also been involved in the development of standardized diagnostic instruments for ASD with colleagues from the United Kingdom and the United States (the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) an observational scale; and the Autism Diagnostic Interview – Revised (ADI-R) a parent interview), now considered the gold standard for research diagnoses all over the world.” Read full post »

The International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) was May 17-19 in Toronto. The annual event is organized by the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) and is essentially the annual rotating Mecca for those involved or interested in autism research.

To give you an idea of the content at IMFAR, one of the organizers, Dr. Stephen Scherer, introduced the conference by saying that a lot of the information presented was unpublished, but certainly will lead to publication. This makes it very exciting, but also forces us to buffer our excitement and understand that so much of this research is in its early stages.

Given that children with autism spectrum disorders often present with limited awareness of their surroundings and/or insight into the dangers in their environments, it can be helpful to provide interventions that work to keep kids safe.

Below are some resources and ideas regarding common safety tools for families:

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